The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [133]
"Jack, who told Sali to drop money into the bank account?" We got us a target, Wills did not say. Maybe more than one.
CHAPTER 15-RED COATS AND BLACK HATS
They let Jack do the computer work, cross-referencing the e-mails to and from Uda bin Sali that day. It was actually fairly miserable work, since Jack had the skills but not yet the soul of an accountant. But he soon learned that the notice to fund the account came from someone named 56MoHa@eurocom.net, who'd logged in over an 800 line from Austria.
They couldn't track him down any more closely than that, but now they had a new name on the Internet to keep track of. It was the cyber identity of somebody who gave orders to a suspected-known-banker for terrorists, and that made 56MoHa@eurocom.net very interesting indeed. It was up to Wills to twig NSA to keep track of that one, in case they had not already made it a "handle of interest," as such identities were known. It was widely believed in the computer community that such handles were largely anonymous, and largely they were, but once they became known to the proper agencies they could be pursued. It was usually by illegal means, but if the line between legal and illegal conduct on the Internet could operate in favor of teenaged pranksters, the same was true for the intelligence community, whose computers were difficult to locate, much less to hack. The most immediate problem was that Eurocom.net did not maintain any long-term storage of its message traffic, and once they fell off the server RAM-by being read by the intended recipient-they were essentially gone forever. Maybe NSA would note that this mutt had written to Uda bin Sali, but lots of people did, for money-changing purposes, and even NSA didn't have the manpower to read and analyze every single e-mail that crossed its computerized path.
The twins arrived just before 11:00 A.M., guided by their in-car GPS computers. The identical C-class Mercedes sedans were directed to the small visitors parking lot located directly behind the building. There Sam Granger met them, shook hands, and walked them inside. They were immediately issued lapel passes to get them past the security personnel, whom Brian immediately typed as former military NCOs.
"Nice place," Brian observed as they headed for the elevators.
Bell smiled. "Yeah, in private industry we can hire better decorators." It also helped if you happened to like the decorator's taste in art, which, fortunately, he did.
"You said 'private industry,'" Dominic observed at once. This was not, he thought, a time to enjoy the subtlety of the moment. This was the agency he worked for, and everything here was important.
"You'll get fully briefed today," Bell said, wondering how much truth he had just relayed to his guests.
The Muzak in the elevators was no more offensive than usual, and the lobby on the top floor-where the boss always was-was pretty vanilla, though it was Breyers vanilla instead of the Safeway house brand.
"So, you tumbled to this today?" Hendley was asking. This new kid, he thought, really did have his father's nose.
"It just jumped off the screen at me," Jack replied. About what one would expect him to say, except that it had not leaped off anyone else's screen.
The boss's eyes went to Wills, whose analytical ability he knew well.
"Jack's been looking at this Sali guy for a couple of weeks. We thought he might be a minor-league player, but today he moved up to triple-A status, maybe more," Tony speculated. "He's indirectly tied to yesterday."
"NSA twig to this yet?" Hendley asked.
Wills shook his head. "No, and I don't think they will. It's too indirect. They and Langley are keeping an eye on his guy, but as a barometer, not a principal." Unless somebody at one place or the other has a lightbulb moment, he didn't have to add. They happened, just not very